Is there only 2 TPB of this excellant series? I have *Detonation Radio * and Planet Ablaze. Anymore on the shelves, or on the way?
Nope. It was a 12 issue maxi-series.
Well, that SUCKS. This, I dont understand. Was it not a popular, well recieved series? Was it not critically acclaimed? Also, Ellis has confirmed that the GF t.v. is dead, dead, dead. Still, good while it lasted, eh? Can you recommend anything similar?
I was really disappointed the TV series didn’t get picked up, but people have downloaded the pilot and said it was quite good. I hear the producers were proud of it and will continue shopping it around. Michelle Forbes was the perfect casting choice for Miranda Zero.
Anyway, if you liked Global Frequency, have you read anything else by Warren Ellis? He wrote The Authority #1-12 (one of the most popular and influential superhero comics of the last decade), the ongoing series Planetary (a brilliant read, despite its slow-to-ship schedule), the completed series Transmetropolitan (think of a Hunter S. Thompson-like crusading gonzo journalist in a dystopian future), a long run on Stormwatch (global-thinking superheroics that led up to his Authority), and many more shorter projects, including current runs on JLA Classified and Iron Man, which is a perfect fit for him. He is one of my favorite writers in comics, and I’d be hard-pressed to think of anything he’s done that is worth avoiding. I named what are universally known as his best works, and all are available in collected editions.
As for concepts similar to Global Frequency, the only things that are coming to mind are Suicide Squad (the '80s DC series about supervillains who undertake dangerous missions for the government in exchange for having their criminal sentences reduced) and The Losers (one of the best books out now, about a Special Forces team who was framed by the CIA and left for dead, only they didn’t die and now they’re out for revenge – kinda like the A-Team for grownups).
Global Frequency: The TV Series had so much potential. Aleph was slightly miscast but Forbes is hard to improve upon. Unfortunately producers wanted to expand the central cast to include other familiar faces besides Miranda Zero and Aleph, with a conventional male and female partnership with sexual tension, which I feel is a big, BIG mistake, personally.
Alan Moore’s fictional M-16 in League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is similar to the Global Frequency: a globetrotting covert group utilizing disparate, largely independent talented specialists to combat extraordinary threats.
Somewhat similar is Neil Gaiman’s 1602: though set in seventeenth century Europe and North America with historical analogs of early Marvel characters.
The Grail, from PREACHER, is probrably the least effective group of this bunch. For all the Grail’s reach and influence, they didn’t have much finesse.
bubastis, to be clear, the Global Frequency comic was never cancelled – Ellis always conceived of it as a 12-issue series. It was part of his pop comics phase, where, while under contract to DC, he wrote a bunch of self-contained stuff in divergent genres (GF, Mek, Tokyo Storm Rising, Red, also Scars for Avatar, some other stuff).
Ellis’ current phase might be called his baby need a new pair of shoes phase.
–Cliffy